Bridge to Lanka

Consistent with Yantra 3.0’s theme, “Urbanization and Identity”, we wanted to reach into our cultural reservoirs to find the theme for our main event. Bridge to Lanka was designed around the story of the Ramayana. Sita, the consort of our hero Rama, has been abducted to the island of Lanka. Much like in the real epic, where Hanuman and the monkey army help him cross the ocean with a bridge, our contestants were to build robots that helped Rama get to the island of Lanka.

“Bridge to Lanka” challenged participants to build a mechanically sound robot which was controlled by an Android app. The robot needed to push blocks around to complete bridges and hit a switch to light LEDs before getting to the center of the game board. By focusing on robustness of robot and functionality of the android application the competition got contestants thinking beyond algorithms. The had to take physical design and usability into account too. The event had 22 teams from 16 engineering colleges.